"It would have been time a long time ago to eliminate it," Geithner said. "The sooner the better."

Geithner's Treasury Department quietly warned at the end of October that the Treasury would reach current legal limit on the federal government's debt by about the end of the year.

There's a distressing subplot here... namely that the federal government, claiming to run an "only" $1 trillion deficit, has already used up almost all of the past year's $2.4 trillion debt limit increase...